Is it impossible to shut down safenet websites by any gov ? There are many countries where internet is highly regulated (i.e. no twitter, facebook or youtube). Is it really impossible to shut down safenet (part of it- based on geo location)? There must be some way to get around this.
Just an example scenario- can’t a gov bann or make it illegal to participate in farming ?
Only way to turn SAFE off would be to turn the internet itself off.
Even the great firewall of china is ineffective against SAFE. No server means no central point of failure to attack/coerce.
VPNs are being completely banned now in China. Being illegal doesn’t stop people using them though. When their VPN access is cut off through the firewall (by this time next year) I expect a lot of them might turn to other options like SAFE.
I don’t know about you, but making it illegal to farm wouldn’t stop me if I knew there was no way for them to know I was farming ;). Security, privacy and freedom… yes please.
Besides, if it got far enough for any state to pass legislation then we can safely say it has already hit the mainstream and become ubiquitous and unstoppable. Laws take a lot of time and effort to get through, if they’re bothering with that then I reckon SAFE has already won the war
More concerning is the possibility of a government clamping down on the engine behind Safe Network, i.e. MaidSafe Inc. How active and necessary will MaidSafe, the company, be after the launch? Might they still need to inject tweets to update the network, much as they do now? Will newbies still be downloading the “on-ramp” (Authenticator) from the MaidSafe website? If the answer to either of these questions is “yes” that might represent a possible channel of disruption should a relevant government deem it advisable.
Once the ship weighs anchor then Maidsafe themselves can not do anything to shut it down. When we are running it all ourselves it will become ‘our’ network and Maidsafe will probably just be the successful App building company that we all owe a big debt of gratitude to. 
When SAFEnet is out there you’d be able to dl it from any number of places. Although at the start I guess we’ll all be downloading from Maidsafe.net. Much like Tor or anything else, these things are always easy to find if there’s demand for them.
I think users would have to agree to accept any future updates, so it might be hard to get users who already exist on an uncensored, private and secure internet to update to a hooky version. I’m sure there will need to be plenty of independent audits of every bit of code in any update.
But what if a late-developing bug surfaced and an update was necessary? Could MaidSafe be prevented from issuing the “patch”? Also, what if a new, important and widely used programming language came into existence and the network needed to be updated to work on it? And we’re not even talking about quantum computing yet. What if a “shield” needed to be installed to guard against that? My point is that the probability of needing MaidSafe for something important in the future seems to be significant. And if that is true, could MaidSafe, the company, be vulnerable to government intervention?
Well, they are based in several countries, so it would be harder to take them down.
I’m also not so sure they will be entirely necessary once the ship has sailed. Any trusted coders and code is fine. The freedom to audit it is all that is needed. Anyone can write the updates and upgrades. Getting to that stable network is the key. Once it’s there we’re free.
I do agree that like all things this project is most vulnerable at the earliest stages. If the uk govt swooped in before it had properly launched and gained some interest then perhaps it could be stopped.
Personally I think they have gotten far enough to make it inevitable now. So much groundwork has been done that any other keen and bright coder who chose to take on the challenge and finish the job will probably get there eventually. The paradigm shift seems inevitable.
I wouldn’t worry anyway, the state is slow and stupid. By the time they start kicking up a fuss it will be far too late. It probably already is.
Besides, some people in the state will be smart enough to realise that they want and need robust security as much as we do. Control is just an illusion, but privacy and security have very tangible value to everyone at every level.
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be a worry wart or a trouble-maker. I just think it is better to be proactive than reactive in matters as important as this. In the case above how would we know which group to trust? Right now, we can be sure to trust anything coming from MaidSafe but if it becomes necessary for some other individuals or groups to be revising the framework of the network, how would we know whether to trust them? What if most or all of the original team was not available? Could the Safe Network end up in a quagmire such as currently exists with BTC and SegWit?
I feel like we can end with a situation where individuals or groups cloning safenet source code and coming up with their own version of safe projects. Is it possible to have some sort of distributed group/authority which will review and authorize any fixes or patches if required ?
I think Safenetwork is somewhat like the app shown in movie “Nerve”.
Yeah, you can totally shut down SAFE.
It’s easy! Just destroy all the computers and cell phones and internet devices on the whole planet, and make sure nobody ever makes another one.
Easy as that!
Not shut down … but governments could white-list traffic they recognize as familiar. Tor has been under attack by China for a long while and now to effectively use Tor in China you need to use special masking software (OBFS4 pluggable transport) that makes your Tor output appear like conventional traffic.
If/when SafeNet traffic is attacked by China, then we can also use similar masking tech.
This is what SAFE will look like (encrypted ordinary traffic)
Traffic pattern analysis can reveal a lot even when data stream is encrypted … that’s why Tor OBFS4 pluggable transport is used … Are you saying that SafeNet will appear to look like https traffic pattern or some other common pattern?
That is the plan.
traffic volume might give a hint of which PCs are running a vault
Everything over the last 10+ years says otherwise. But still good to consider the worst.
So there is still a way to track and shut down vaults ? In worst case maybe in some parts of the world we can see authority going nuts to stop vaults in their area. However we will always have vaults running from all over the world and it’s nearly impossible to shut down all vaults.
The problem with traffic volume is that there are a number of reasons for it and to shutdown based on volume is going to cause as many troubles as they are trying to solve. (reasons include approved download sites, businesses, approved cloud services, etc.)
well, I had the same concerns back in the day.
Firewalls with deep packet inspection (DPI) will have a hard time detecting SafeNetwork’s traffic.
Search for pluggable transport in the forum
It’s not that different from Bitcoin or ethereum when it comes to how the network is maintained. Sure Maidsafe could be compromised or whatever, but noone is forced to use their vaults or anyone elses for that matter. The network can split or the development can be taken over like some are trying with bitcoin ATM.
Dont forget, the network will be constantly worked on and developed just like any other network.
The more successfull safenet will be, the more shit we will have to endure, im sure. Just like bitcoin. But hey, It’s still worth it!
Well, bitcoin can not be worked on really. I always assumed the same holds true for safenet. Once launched I assumed no more updates were possible. Have I misunderstood that part?